DISPATCH EDITORIALS

Sunday's early-morning shooting at Buffalo Wild Wings that left one woman dead and another facing a murder charge created a different perception among some in the community, primarily because of where it happened.

Last week, as the city council and mayor were engaged in a discussion of the city's grim financial outlook, councilman Bill Gavin pushed back when the city's chief operations officer, David Armstrong, suggested that a tax increase was inevitable. Gavin's position was the city should explore all possible options of reducing expenses before taking that step.

At first blush, the situation might appear counterintuitive: The Lowndes County School District will soon be awash in revenue, yet on Aug. 26 the district will ask voters to go to the polls to support a proposal to issue $47 million in bonds to be used to build, renovate or replace facilities on all three of the district's campuses.

The legend is told that in 1789, when informed that her French subjects had no bread, Marie-Antoinette (bride of France's King Louis XVI) supposedly sniffed, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"--"Let them eat cake."
In the subsequent centuries that callous remark has been considered the standard by which all examples of a tone-deaf leader is measured.

Today is the first day of school in Starkville, Oktibbeha County and West Point. Students in Columbus and Lowndes County begin classes Thursday while some private schools will not begin classes until next week.

The Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority board of directors meet monthly in a small conference room at Propst Park. These are generally low-profile meetings. There are eight chairs for visitors placed along two walls of the small room, but they are usually unoccupied. There is rarely any media at these meetings.

There is a video that has gone viral that shows a Copperhead snake that has just been decapitated.
The snake's body continues to writhe and wriggle as the head lays motionless near its body. The snake's body makes contact with its head several times, then -- and this is what made the video viral -- the snake's head suddenly sinks its fangs deep into its own body.

Mississippi has two sales tax holidays. The first came last weekend with a sales tax exemption on back-to-school items limited to clothing and footwear. The other, signed into law this year by Gov. Phil Bryant and enjoying broad legislative support, comes Sept. 5-7.

Figures from a U.S. Census Report paint a grim picture of life in the Golden Triangle. The U.S. Census Bureau classifies "poverty areas" as census tracts with a 20 percent poverty rate or higher. According to this definition the entire Golden Triangle region is a poverty area.

A story in the July 21 edition of Air Force Times is certain to cause some hurt feelings in our community.
In the story, Columbus Air Force based was ranked in a tie for "third least popular" of the 68 USAF bases in the U.S.

It has become politically fashionable in some circles to treat Common Core as something akin to the "mark of the beast."
More than anything else, Common Core is a victim of timing.
It didn't start out that way.